


you know the way that i hide

by blanchtt



Series: 500X LEDA [20]
Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Werewolf, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-23
Updated: 2017-06-23
Packaged: 2018-11-17 14:07:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11276844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blanchtt/pseuds/blanchtt
Summary: “Alright. You can stay,” Shay says out loud, and wonders if this is how cat ladies are born. “But just until you’re dry.”





	you know the way that i hide

**Author's Note:**

> Rare-pair minific request: Shay/Sarah, black cats.
> 
>  
> 
> SHRUG EMOJI @ THIS ENTIRE FIC. i just want my damn self-indulgent lesbian werewolf fic without the angst.

 

She looks out the window of the front of the studio on her break, groans even though she loves rain. What she doesn’t love is being stuck at work for another four hours and remembering that she’s left her living room window ajar. It’s not a small window, either, and she hopes water doesn’t get in and ruin the hardwood. Spring sucks, Shay decides, and tries to put the window out of her mind for the rest of work. Summer is by far her favorite – hot, humid, and best of all, predictable.

 

She walks home after class, rain still falling sideways in a steady, windy mess, and stands in the doorway of her building, flicks water off her umbrella and folds it shut before climbing the stairs.

 

She opens the door to her apartment and assesses the damage: window open and curtains soaking, but luckily a puddle of water doesn’t come splashing across the floor greet her. Shay breathes a sigh of relief, steps in, and locks the door behind herself, and quickly wishes she hadn’t.

 

She walks over to the windows and shuts them, turns around, and realizes somehow she’s missed the gigantic black cat sitting on her kitchen table.

 

It sits curled like a loaf of bread, watching through slitted amber eyes and clearly in no mood to move, and Shay purses her lips. It is terribly easy to get into her home. The fire escape’s just outside, and the cat looks damp. That plus the open windows make it pretty easy to see what happened.

 

“Alright. You can stay,” Shay says out loud, and wonders if this is how cat ladies are born. “But just until you’re dry.”

 

 

-

 

Shay opens the window the next morning, Toronto quiet and not yet awake, and reaches out and leaves a saucer of cat food on the fire escape before shutting it. If the cat’s still hanging around, then that’s another nice thing she’s able to do for it.

 

She’d given it a wide berth last night after coming back with food for them both, looked it over once or twice but hadn’t seen a collar. But it was too sleek and calm to be feral, and so when it had gotten up, yawn-stretched, back arching, and then hopped over to the windowsill, watching her almost expectantly, she’s opened up the window, let it out, and watched as it’d leapt over to the fire escape, just like she’d guessed, and disappeared into the morning gloom.

 

And she’s right about to finish cooking dinner when she hears muffled, plaintive meowing coming from the landing just outside the window.

 

Shay turns off the burner, walks over, and as soon as the latch is undone and the window’s pulled back there it is again, butting its head through the crack she’s left for it and looking up at her before leaping down onto the floor with a thump.

 

Is being whipped part of being a cat owner? Not that she owns this one. Maybe that makes it even worse. While the window’s open, Shay leans out, nabs the saucer and brings it back inside, frowning.

 

“Not a fan of Fancy Feast,” Shay comments, watching as the cat pauses near the kitchen table, crouches, back legs tensing, and leaps up onto it neatly.

 

She’s big on healing (hence the tiny garden of herbs in the windowsill and the crystals on her nightstand) and she knows pets are just another aspect of that. She sets down her plate, sits down, and lets the cat be, although it takes up a significant part of her narrow table.

 

It’s no surprise that it turns into a staring contest, one in which she cracks easily. “I’m pretty sure I’m not supposed to give you people food,” Shay says aloud, using her fork and knife to cut a piece of her salmon and lay it on a napkin anyway, pushing it towards the cat.

 

It does the bread-loaf thing again, broad paws tucked under itself and eyes watching her as it eats, and Shay shakes her head, mostly at herself.

 

“You’re welcome,” she says, and actually gets a meow in response.

 

 

-

 

 

It’s summer, so of course she’s going to leave the windows open. For the breeze. It has nothing to do with the cat that’s decided to come live on her windowsill.

 

She doesn’t _regret_ coming to Toronto, but it can be lonely sometimes. She’s yet to make real friends from work, the kind you do more than get a beer after class with, and Sapphire hasn’t proven helpful in finding a girlfriend.

 

Over the weeks it’s taken time for the cat to lose its aloof manner, coming and going as it pleases, but now in a dramatic but normal turn of events (or so her Internet research on cat behavior has led her to believe) now it can’t seem to get enough of her. There’s the familiar thump of it hitting the hardwood floor, apparently tired of sitting on the sill and sunning itself, and then Shay looks over her shoulder, watches it walk over to her bed where she lies on her stomach reading.

 

“Hey, you,” she says, and that is definitely cat lady territory, right? But the cat meows back, a unsurprisingly loud sound for something that looks like a miniature panther, and hops up onto the duvet next to her, kneading its claws into the material briefly before high-stepping it over to her and bumping its head up against her shoulder so hard she nearly loses her page.

 

“You’re not into Neruda,” she jokes, and sets her book down. And maybe it’s how soft the bed is. Maybe the cat likes her. Either way, it blinks thoughtfully, then lies down suddenly at her side, curled just barely against her arm.

 

 

-

 

 

It is impossible to take a picture of the cat.

 

The moment Shay gets out her phone and it’s like the cat can sense her opening up the camera app. In a flash it’s darted into another room or over to the window, as if threatening to leave, and so Shay stops trying. She makes flyers with just text instead.

 

 

Found:

Black cat. Female.

416-529-0185.

 

 

_-_

She comes home late from the first date in months that’s got potential, and steps right into a puddle of cat puke when she opens the door. Shay narrows her eyes and gives the cat a dirty look as it lounges on her bed. Is it possible for cats to look satisfied?

 

“Nothing can spoil this night,” she tells it, stripping off her now-dirty sock, and quickly cleans up the mess before stripping and tossing her things in a laundry basket. She slips on an oversized shirt, walks over to bed ready to pick the cat up, who's staring pointedly away from her, and put it somewhere else.

 

She can’t bring herself to do it, though, and instead shakes her head and gets under the covers, not particularly caring if she upsets it. But passive-aggressively yanking the covers is hard to do with a cat that weighs something like eighteen kilos.

 

“You’re lucky you’re cute,” Shay says, but the cat’s already up and walking the short distance over to her, curling up in a little ball just next to her, the tip of its tail under its nose.

 

Okay. It’s not like it did that on purpose. It’s hard to be mad at it, and Shay sighs, reaches out to run a hand over the cat’s back in apology. Its sleek black head twitches toward her hand, and Shay lightens her touch, wonders if she’s going to end up with little needle-sharp puncture wounds all over her hand.

 

But she seems to know what she’s doing, because the cat finally relaxes, closes its eyes, and starts to purr.

 

 

-

 

 

Just when she thinks she knows something about cats, she doesn’t. It comes and goes, and lately it goes, and Shay tries not to worry. It’s not helped by the voicemail, though.

 

She checks her phone after work to find a missed call and a voicemail asking her to call back. She does so on her walk home, hears the cell ring a few times before it picks up and a man’s voice answers.

 

“Hello?”

 

“Hey,” Shay starts, and gets to the point. “My name’s Shay. You called me about the missing cat?”

 

“Oh, my god. Yes!” the man says, sounding incredibly relieved, and Shay hears another voice asking something behind him, a woman from the sounds of it. “Felix. My sister’s… cat’s gone missing and we’re a little worried someone unsavory might have picked her up, being a black cat and whatnot. Do you still have her?”

 

He sounds desperate and Shay wishes she could tell him she did, but the last time she saw the cat was Monday, which is exactly what she tells him along with the promise to text back if she sees it.

 

 

_-_

 

 

She leaves the windows open each day, and couldn’t be happier to hear the clatter of things falling onto her hardwood floor.

 

The cat looks a little worse for wear, limping but still alive, and Shay overlooks the plants it’s knocked over on its way through the window, the marquee ampersand that might need a new lightbulb or two.

 

She picks it up gently, something the cat rarely lets her do, and puts it on the table, turns around for a dishtowel she runs under the water and a knife from the drawer. The knife is for the aloe vera which is now in a pot shattered on the floor, and Shay cuts off one of the leaves, turns that over in her fingers and slices it again lengthwise before heading back to the table.

 

It’s hard to believe how much she missed a cat, Shay thinks as she wipes it down with the towel, wincing at the dirt and what might be dried blood. But that could just be her nature – she’s not a pescetarian for just health reasons.

 

“I don’t know what pitbull you pissed off, but yikes,” Shay says darkly, and sets down the dishtowel, picking up a slice of the aloe vera and rubbing the gooey side on a deep scratch on the cat’s nose, to the cat’s obvious and squirming displeasure.

 

Later, the cat sleeping soundly and safely on her bed, Shay reaches into her phone for her phone, texts Felix’s number, and waits.

 

 

-

 

 

The last time she sees the cat is also the first time she meets Sarah.

 

She comes home and finds Sarah leaning against her front door, nonchalant and hands in her jacket pockets, and there is that same familiar dark hair, the lazy movements, the confident gaze from amber eyes and the still-healing scratch across the bridge of her nose.

 

“I think I may have some explaining to do,” Sarah says, her smile all pointed eyeteeth, and this is definitely going to take some getting used to. 

 

“You took the stairs this time,” Shay jokes, recovering, and Sarah’s grin grows broader.

 

“Cat’s out of the bag,” she replies with a shrug, and Shay groans as Sarah laughs, puts down her bag of groceries and gets her keys out to open the door.

 

“Your brother clued me in on some of it, but I still have more than a few questions," Shay begins, unlocks the door and steps inside. "So do you want to stay for dinner? Promise I won’t try to feed you cat food again.”

 

“Deal," Sarah agrees, and picks up one of the bags, makes her way into her home with the same ease she always has.

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
